A radio communication network includes a network for providing a voice call and data communication such as a cellular network and a network for providing data communication such as a wireless local area network (WLAN). The radio communication network includes a radio access point that serves to receive a signal from a backbone/backhaul network, converts the received signal into a radio signal, and transmits the same to a terminal, and reversely, receives a radio signal from a terminal and delivers it to the backbone/backhaul network. In a cellular network, a radio access point is called a base station, and in a WLAN, a radio access point is called an access point. Such a radio access point has a coverage within which a signal may reach depending on signal strength, a communication environment and the like, and provides communication to a user terminal existing within the coverage.
FIG. 1 illustrates the configuration of a radio communication network. Four base stations S12, S14, S16, and S18 provide communication to users within their coverages (i.e., cells) C1, C2, C3, and C4, respectively. For example, communication by the base stations S12, S14, S16, and S18 may be 2G, 3G, or 4G communication based on time division multiple access (TDMA), code division multiple access (CDMA), frequency division multiple access (FDMA), or orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). For example, 2G communication includes CDMA and global system for mobile communications (GSM), 3G communication includes wideband CMDA (WCDMA), and 4G communication includes long term evolution (LTE), LTE-Advanced, and WiBro (Wireless Broadband).
Meanwhile, access points (APs) S22 and S24 may be access points for WLAN including IEEE 802.11a, 11b, 11g, 11n, 11h, 11ac, and 11ad that provides radio communication to users within coverages W1 and W2 thereof.
Communication provided by the APs S22 and S24 may be packet data communication using TCP/IP. In addition, APs S32 and S34 may be wireless personal area network (WPAN) which provides radio communication to users within coverages P1 and P2 thereof. Communication provided by the APs S32 and S34 may be ultra-short range radio communication including Bluetooth™, ZigBee™ (IEEE 802.15.4 ZigBee), or the like and may be packet data communication using TCP/IP. The base stations (BSs) S12, S14, S16, and S18, and WLAN/WPAN APs S22, S24, 32, and 34 expressed by radio APs S12, S14, S16, S18, S22, S24, S32, and S34 may exist in mutually adjacent locations in overlapping coverage.
The number of user terminals existing within the coverage continues to be changed depending on user movement, and each radio AP appropriately controls the use of communication resources thereof in response to the change. However, although resource management within single coverage is performed by a radio AP, a resource management over the entire network is not performed. For example, when multiple users within a coverage C1 of the BS S12 move to a coverage C2 of the adjacent radio AP S14, the radio AP S14 senses the new users and increases usage channels, or the like, to provide service to the new users, while the radio AP S12 reduces usage channels. In this manner, services may be continuously provided to the users, but this method has some limitations as follows.
First, the BS S12 does not use some of channels allocated thereto or a portion of available hardware, while the processing capacity of the BS S14 is surpassed so the BS S14 cannot serve all the users. For example, it is assumed that the BS S12 and the BS S14 retain channel cards available to serve 64 terminals, respectively, and 64 users are present in the cells C1 and C2, respectively. In this case, when some users move from the cell C1 to the cell C2, the BS S12 is in a situation in which it does not use the whole of the capacity of the channel cards thereof, while the BS S14 cannot provide a service to all the users. Thus, although the capacities of the channel cards retained by the two BSs S12 and S14 are enough to serve all the users, since the users are distributed, they cannot be served.
Further, substantially, there is no management mechanism between the BSs S12, S14, S16, and S18, and the APs S22, S24, S32, and S34. Thus, in a region in which a coverage W1 of the AP 22 and a coverage C2 of the BS S14 overlap, the BS S14 and the AP S22 independently perform communication, resulting inevitably in an ineffective use of communication resources. This is the same with the other APs S22, S24, S32, and S34.
In accordance with the present invention, the integrated BS capable of optimally managing resources between several homogenous or heterogeneous simplified radio APs and a network using the same are provided. When the provided network is used, efficiency of utilizing resources between simplified radio APs can be enhanced, so performance can be improved and energy/resource can be saved. In addition, since the existing radio APs such as a BS and a short-range or ultra-short range radio AP are replaced by the more simplified radio APs (simplified radio BS and short-range simplified radio AP), installation costs of a new network and maintenance costs can be reduced. Also, since handover is performed between radio APs in a simpler manner, communication efficiency can be enhanced, and communication performance can be improved by allowing several simplified radio APs to serve a single terminal as necessary. Besides, the accuracy in determining a location of a terminal can be enhanced by using signals from several simplified radio APs.